Capping a live lead service line with Philmac UTC?

[anon32]

Thanks again, all. None of the plumbers who said you can't put a fitting on a live line actually saw the leak, I'm talking about plumbers on other online forums.

The plumbers who've actually been here and taken a look refuse to play around with a lead line at all under any circumstances. They refuse to do any work unless they can rip out the line out from the street main to the meter.

I have a cheap pair of plastic pipe cutters as well as a full assortment of metal-cutting blades. My father is a master welder and I bought this 130-year-old house in an extreme state of disrepair. I've had to change out all the cast iron up to the cellar wall, took out a whole bunch of galvanized supply pipes, fixed hazardous electrical conditions, fixed plaster mouldings and medallions, etc. My father even welded shut a black iron steam pipe that had corroded.

But this project seems particularly daunting because there seem to be a good number of people who swear a live line can't be fitted.

 

[dilalio]

But this project seems particularly daunting because there seem to be a good number of people who swear a live line can't be fitted

We are go for launch
Just video it please

 

[dilalio]

I've posted this before but it still makes me cringe/laugh...

And its in the good old USofA

 

[anon32]

Sorry to disappoint you buddy, but I'm gonna try freezing it first...

 

[bobasd]

HERTS P&D,
Brackets show additional information that is interesting but not essential to the subject - my ref for grinders was "using a (corded) grinder" implying, for anyone with a basic understanding of how and why brackets are used in the English language that if a cordless grinder was not used then maybe the option was a corded tool.

You claim to be a tradesman but its a strange kind of tradesman who doesn't know when the clock is ticking up work hours?
Do you know the difference between an hourly rate and a price for a job?
If not then how do you price your work - do you pay people so that you can work for them? It would certainly save worrying about
complicated things like hourly rates or "being on the clock".

 

[anon32]

Around here the plumbers charge a flat pre-negotiated fee for ripping out an underground service line.

In my case, about $12,000.

 

[bobasd]

anon32,
My suggestion to you was, of course, a ref to using a plumber to do the freezing but if you cant get one then thats how it is.
I dont doubt that a live line can be frozen but that i've never done it, and when i was learning i saw experienced plumbers have difficulties -
however conditions vary, and can't always be directly compared.

Keep in touch, and tell and show us how things turned out.

 

[anon32]

thanks bob, now I understand. good call, i'll ask a couple of plumbers if they're willing to help me try to freeze it, but around here they won't even return your calls for a job that's less than $600. not enough people going into the trades in the US. everyone was told to go to university, and now plumbers bill more than doctors do!

 

[bobasd]

iow's roughly a days pay?
Have you ever watched a plumber on u-tube called steve lavimoigne(?) - i just type stevelav and it comes up.
if you can understand his great accent, he does all kinds of jobbing work - he claims to charge about $116/hr.

 

[cdbe]

I did mine live, as I couldn't find a stoptap. The pipe was under the kitchen floor slab and came through the wall from next doors' house and had leaked for so long it had washed the soil from under the foundations causing the rear wall of the house to collapse. There was a section about 18" long perforated with small holes. I had about 6" of decent pipe coming through the wall. I'm not a plumber so I did a bit of preparation: bought a few philmacs of the correct size, pulled them apart to see how they worked, got a piece of pipe the same diameter to practice getting the fitting on properly and quickly.
I put a length of mdpe pipe on the other end of the philmac with an opened stop tap on it (with a length of hosepipe running into a nearby drain). I carefully cut the lead pipe with a standard copper pipe cutter (so as not to distort the pipe as the fitting won't go on) which was very slow going but worked well. I stopped just as a tiny spray of water came from the cut and finished the cut with a mini hacksaw which only took a few seconds, ignored the water gushing out and quickly got the philmac on and tightened, then turned the stoptap off - job done!
I don't have a better picture (this is a later one where I'd dug out to underpin the collapsed foundation) but you can just see the original philmac on the left literally under the wall where it joins the lead:

I subsequently replaced the water pipe with a complete new one from the street and the water company found the old stop tap three houses down, in the footpath, buried under 6" of tarmac.

 

[anon32]

That's amazing, cdbe, thank you!

May I ask what the diameter of the lead supply pipe was?

 

[cdbe]

May I ask what the diameter of the lead supply pipe was?

I think about 25mm. I used the philmac that covers pipes from 21-27.